ROBERT MUELLER: Unmasked Part Two

MUELLER’S FIVE YEAR UP-OR-OUT POLICY

In federal law enforcement, it takes a new federal agent or supervisor about five years or so after arriving at a newly assigned office to gain the trust and respect of local law officers. That trust and respect is absolutely critical to doing the best job possible. Yet new FBI Director Robert Mueller came up with a new personnel policy that would rid the FBI of thousands of years of its most invaluable experience.

In a nutshell, after an FBI employee was in any type of supervisory position for five years, he or she had to either come to Washington to sit at a desk or get out of the FBI. In the myriad of FBI offices around the country, most agents love what they do in actively enforcing the law. They have families involved in the community; their kids enjoy their schools; and they do not want to move to the high cost of living in Washington, DC, and especially not to an inside desk job. What occurred around the country was that agents in charge of their local offices got out of the FBI and did something more lucrative. Though they really wanted to stay in, they were not allowed to do so if they were not moving to DC. Agents told me that it was not unusual for the Special Agent in Charge of a field office to have well over 20 years of experience before the policy change. Under Mueller’s policy that changed to new Special Agents in Charge having five to ten years of experience when they took over. If the FBI Director wanted nothing but “yes” men and women around the country working for him, this was a great policy. Newer agents are more likely to unquestioningly salute the FBI Mecca in Washington, and the Director, and never boldly offer a suggestion to fix a bad idea and Mueller had plenty of them. Whether it was wasting millions of dollars on a software boondoggle or questionable personnel preferences, agents tell me Mueller did not want to hear from more experienced people voicing their concerns about his ideas or policies.

An NPR report December 13, 2007, entitled, “FBI’S ‘Five-And-Out’ Transfer Policy Draws Criticism” dealt with the Mueller controversial policy: “From the beginning of this year (2007) until the end of September (2007), 576 agents found themselves in the five-and-out pool. Less than half of them — just 286 — opted to go to headquarters; 150 decided to take a pay cut and a lesser job to stay put; 135 retired; and five resigned outright.”

In the period of nine months accounted for in this report, the FBI ran off a massive amount of absolutely priceless law enforcement experience vested in 140 invaluable agents. For the vast part, those are the agents who have seen the mistakes, learned lessons, could advise newer agents on unseen pitfalls of investigations and pursuit of justice. So many of these had at least 20-30 years of experience or more. The lessons learned by such seasoned agents were lost as the agents carried it with them when they left. In the 2007 NPR report, the FBI Agents Association indicated that the Five-Year-Up-or- Out program hobbles field offices and takes relationships forged there for granted. In other words, it was a terrible idea. The incalculable experience loss damages the FBI by eliminating those in the field in a position to write to or meet with the FBI Director to advise him against some of the mounting judgment errors on his part which were listed in the NPR article. But this was not the only damage done.

If an FBI Director has inappropriate personal vengeance in mind or holds an inappropriate prejudice such as those that infamously motivated Director J. Edgar Hoover, then the older, wiser, experienced agents were not around with the confidence to question or guide the Director away from potential misjudgment. I also cannot help but wonder if Mueller had not run off the more experienced agents, would they have been able to advise against and stop the kind of abuses and corruption being unearthed right now that occurred during the Obama administration. Rather than admit that his Five Year Up or Out Policy was a mistake, Mueller eventually changed the policy to a Seven Year Up or Out Program. I once pointed out to him at a hearing that if he had applied the Five Year Up-or-Out Policy to literally everyone in a supervisory position, he himself would have had to leave the FBI by September of 2006. He did not seem to be amused.

One other problem remained that will be discussed in more detail later in this article. Before Mueller became Director, FBI agents were trained to identify certain Muslims who had radicalized and become dangerous. Mueller purged and even eliminated training that would have helped identify radical Islamic killers. By running off the more experienced agents who had better training on radical Islam before Mueller, “blinded us of the ability to identify our enemy,” as I was told by some of them, Mueller put victims in harm’s way in cities like Boston, San Diego and elsewhere.

NATIONAL SECURITY LETTER ABUSES

National Security Letters (NSL) are a tool that allows the DOJ to bypass the formality of subpoenas, applications for warrants with affidavits in support, and instead simply send a letter to an individual, business or any entity they so choose to demand that records or documents of any kind must be produced and provided to the sender. The letter also informs the recipient that if the recipient reveals to anyone that the letter was received or what it requires to be produced, then the recipient has committed a federal felony and will be prosecuted. It is a rather dramatic event to receive such a letter and realize that this simple letter could have such profound power and consequences. The Committee in the House of Representatives that has oversight jurisdiction over the DOJ is the Judiciary Committee of which I am a member. We have grilled DOJ personnel in the past over the potential for NSL abuse, but both the House and Senate Committees were reassured that there were no known abuses of this extra-constitutional power.

Unfortunately, the day came when we learned that there had been an extraordinary number of abuses. Apparently, some of Mueller’s FBI agents had just been sending out demands for records or documents without any probable cause as the Fourth Amendment requires. Some agents were on outright fishing expeditions just to find out what different people were doing. We were told that there may have even been thousands of NSL’s sent out to get documents without following either the Constitutional requirements or the DOJ’s own policy requirements. When the Inspector General’s report revealed such absolutely outrageous conduct by FBI agents, some of us in Congress were absolutely livid.

An NBC News report on March 9, 2007, had this headline and sub-headline: “Justice Department: FBI acted illegally on data; Audit finds agency misused Patriot Act to obtain information on citizens.” The report went on to say, “FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was to blame for not putting more safeguards into place. ‘I am to be held accountable,’ Mueller said. He told reporters he would correct the problems and did not plan to resign. ‘The inspector general went and did the audit that I should have put in place many years ago,’ Mueller said.”

Some of us Republicans wanted to completely eliminate such an extraordinary power that was so widely abused. Nonetheless, I could not help but wonder that if Mueller had not run off thousands of years of experience though his “Five Year Up-or-Out Policy,” perhaps young, inexperienced agents would not have been so tempted to vastly abuse the power of the NSL. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lost his job over the widespread, pervasive abuses under Mueller’s supervision. In retrospect, Mueller probably should have been gone first. It was his people, his lack of oversight, his atmosphere that encouraged it, and his FBI that did virtually nothing to hold people accountable.

THE WITCH HUNT AGAINST REPUBLICAN SENATOR TED STEVENS AND HIS TRAGIC DEATH

Ted Stevens had served in the U.S. Senate since 1968 and was indicted in 2008 by the U.S. Justice Department. One would think before the U.S. government would seek to destroy a sitting U.S. Senator, there would be no question whatsoever of his guilt. One would be completely wrong in thinking so when the FBI Director is Robert Mueller.

Roll Call provides us with General Colin Powell’s take on Ted Stevens:

“According to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had worked closely with the senator since his days as President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, the senator was ‘a trusted individual … someone whose word you could rely on. I never heard in all of those years a single dissenting voice with respect to his integrity, with respect to his forthrightness, and with respect to the fact that when you shook hands with Ted Stevens, or made a deal with Ted Stevens, it was going to be a deal that benefited the nation in the long run, one that he would stick with.’”

Such a glowing reputation certainly did not inhibit Mueller’s FBI from putting Stevens in its cross-hairs, pushing to get an indictment that came 100 days before his election, and engaging in third world dictator-type tactics to help an innocent man lose his election, after which he lost his life. As reported by NPR, after the conviction and all truth came rolling out of the framing and conviction of Senator Stevens, the new Attorney General Eric Holder, had no choice. He “abandoned the Stevens case in April 2009 after uncovering new and ‘disturbing’ details about the prosecution…” Unfortunately for Ted Stevens, his conviction came only eight days before his election, which tipped the scales on a close election.

Does this sound familiar yet?

The allegation was that Senator Stevens had not paid full price for improvements to his Alaska cabin. As Roll Call reported, he had actually overpaid for the improvements by over twenty percent. Roll Call went on to state: “But relying on false records and fueled by testimony from a richly rewarded ‘cooperating’ witness… government prosecutors convinced jurors to find him guilty just eight days before the general election which he lost by less than 2 percent of the vote.”

After a report substantiated massive improprieties by the FBI and DOJ in the investigation and prosecution of Senator Stevens, the result was ultimately a complete dismissal of the conviction. At the time there was no direct evidence that Director Mueller was aware of the tactics of concealing exculpatory evidence that would have exonerated Stevens, and the creation of evidence that convicted him in 2008. Nearly four years later, in 2012, the Alaska Dispatch News concluded:

“Bottom line: Kepner (the lead FBI investigator accused of wrongdoing by Agent Joy) is still working for the FBI and is still investigating cases, including criminal probes. Joy, the whistleblower (who was the FBI agent who disclosed the FBI’s vast wrongdoing, especially of Kepner), has left the agency.”

Director Mueller either did control or could have controlled what happened to the lead FBI agent that destroyed a well-respected U.S. Senator. That U.S. Senator was not only completely innocent of the manufactured case against him, he was an honest and honorable man. Under Director Mueller’s overriding supervision, the wrongdoer who helped manufacture the case stayed on and the whistleblower was punished. Obviously, the FBI Director wanted his FBI agents to understand that honesty would be punished if it revealed wrongdoing within Mueller’s organization.

Further, not only was evidentiary proof of Senator Stevens’ innocence concealed from the Senator’s defense attorneys by the FBI, there was also a witness that provided compelling testimony that Stevens’ had done everything appropriately. That witness, however, was who agents sent back to Alaska by FBI Agents, unbeknownst to the Senator’s defense attorneys. This key exonerating testimony was placed out of reach for Senator Stevens’ defense. Someone should have gone to jail for this illegality within the nation’s top law enforcement agency. Instead, Senator Stevens lost his seat, and surprise, surprise, Mueller’s FBI helped another elected Republican bite the dust. Unfortunately, I am not speaking figuratively.

In August of 2010, former Senator Stevens boarded his doomed plane. But for the heinous, twisted and corrupt investigation by the FBI, and inappropriate prosecution by the DOJ, he would have still been a sitting U.S. Senator. Don’t forget, one vote in the Senate was critical to ObamaCare becoming law also. If Senator Stevens was still there, it would not have become law.

In the following month after Senator Stevens’ untimely death, in September of 2010, a young DOJ lawyer, Nicholas Marsh who had been involved in the Stevens case, committed suicide at his home as the investigation into the fraudulently created case continued. The report expressed, “no conclusion as to his (Marsh’s) conduct,” given his untimely death. Robert Luskin, an attorney for Marsh, said, “he tried to do the right thing.”

If you wonder what happened to the valuable FBI agent who was an upstanding whistleblower with a conscience, you should know that in Mueller’s FBI, Special Agent Joy was terribly mistreated. Orders came down from on high that he was not to participate in any criminal investigation again, which is the FBI management’s way of forcing an agent out of the FBI. On the other hand, the FBI agent who was said to have manufactured evidence against Senator Stevens while hiding evidence of his innocence was treated wonderfully and continued to work important criminal cases for Director Mueller. If you wonder if mistreatment of an FBI agent who exposed impropriety was an anomaly in Mueller’s FBI, the Alaska Dispatch noted this about another case:

“Former FBI agent Jane Turner was treated much like Joy (the whistleblower agent in the Stevens case) after she blew the whistle on fellow agents who had taken valuable mementos from Ground Zero following the 9-11 terrorist attacks. She took the FBI to court over her treatment and ended up winning her case against the agency after a jury trial. When you blow the whistle on the FBI, ‘it’s death by a million paper cuts,’ she told Alaska Dispatch. Turner said that agents who violate the FBI’s omerta — those who internally challenge the agency — are undercut and isolated. ‘They (Mueller’s FBI supervisors) do everything they can to get you to quit’ she said.

Summary

The plot thickens!

I’ve heard many times through the years allegations made against someone that if true would be extremely damaging to that person. But often people who hear those allegations — especially when they come from a well-known and respected member of law enforcement — the default position of the hearer is that “if Billy Bob said that then it must be true.” Mueller in his investigatory career very seldom has personally made allegations against others from criminal wrongdoing. But he has continually manipulated the criminal justice system to achieve whatever in each case is his ultimate objective. Unfortunately for those who are targets of Mueller’s anger, often Mueller’s objectives have been successful and have ruined peoples’ lives.

Tomorrow please come back for ROBERT MUELLER: Unmasked Part Three!